My invitation must have got lost in the mail. Did Santa bring you a wfo?

I wish I could make pizza for everyone on the forum, but I'd need a WFO to churn out 1 min pies. I have put the WFO on the back burner for a bit until I can find the right crew to do the rest of the outdoor kitchen. I did get this for Christmas though. I'm excited to grow some Neapolitan Basil this winter.

Pizza01

this project is overwhelming chau. your mbe is great i should make one, my parents have black grill just like it. your pies man... my god! i'm an amateur from my perspective you are a pro. here in sirael you could open pizzeria and make lots of money. very good, keep up the good work buddy.

I thank you all for giving me really great idea's on this MBE Build! I think i finally cooked my pizza correctly! (it even browned on the top)

For about a month or so, i've read both the LBE and MBE threads thoroughly and i've been really experimenting on trying to get my pizza to cook correctly to have that even heat balance on the top and the bottom. I think the real essential part to making my MBE better that were already mentioned in this thread were:

-Having a 2 inch x 8 inch vent in the front of the MBE.

-Using the heat damn mod to make sure the heat come from the back and over your pizza. (essen)(kinda like how heat radiates from the back of a wood fired oven and over your pizza)

-Using a solid stone, as opposed to firebrick halves, created a much much more consistent bake.(I bought a 2 x 16 inch cordierite stones from my local ceramic supply for 18 dollars each)

-Absolutely essential to use a top stone as i believe it radiates heat to the top of the pizza. Radiative heat transfer is king!(maybe its more peace of mind...)

-I finally implemented Chaus "Sand Heat Diffuser." I remembered that when you push the sand bowl forwards, it creates more of a heat zone in the back. As i used too much sand in my bowl, all the areas above the sand bowl were about 400 F while the areas near the back of the pizza not covered by the sand bowl were around 600 F. Next time i will put less sand, about3/4 level, in the sand bowl so that there is more a variance between the two zones. (pizza baking zone, cornicone baking zone)

Something i did a bit differently that were mentioned in different threads of this forum were to:

-Place Lava rocks between the pizza cooking area and let it heat up and absorb that convective heat from the air. The lava rocks would than absorb this energyand radiate it to the top stone and conduct energy to the bottom stone. When you want to cook your pizza, push the lava rocks to theback of the LBE, where hot air happens to flow, blow off the lava rock dust on the bottom stone, and continue cooking your pizza.

-A lower conductivity "heat diffuser" below my bottom stone. In this case, i placed a 16 inch pizza pan, filled it up with sand, and placed my stone directly on top of it. The thermal properties of Sand (Specific heat-0.25, Thermal conductivity-0.15-0.25 w/m.k) in comparison with the thermal properties of cordierite (Specific Heat-0.35, Thermal conducitivity-3 W/m.k) creats a "heat bottleneck" for the bottom stone. In essence, it has the heat absorption properties of Quarry tile with the conductive properties of cordierite.

Along the way, i've tried the following to failure:

-Using Lava rocks as a diffuser directly over the bayou burner. Contrary to popular belief, lava rocks don't act as a diffuser in this situation, but actually act more like "Infrared Heating Rocks." Ever notice how people with lava rock grills back than would say "Lava rocks make my wood juicier?" , it is mainly because the rocks act as great radiative diffusers as opposed to convective diffuser. I would notice my lava rocks glow bright red (which is about at least 1600 degrees Fahrenheit) and cooking my pies on firebricks in under two minutes (i always wondered how it was possible to cook pizza for more than 3 minutes in the MBE)). In theory, if you were to replace charcoal briquettes with Lava Rocks in a chimney starter over your Bayou burner, heat it up until it glows bright red/orange and place it between the 2-3 inch cooking zone where your pizza usually cooks, it would act like placing charcoaldirectly on the stones itself, without the mess. Your lava rocks would transfer its heat through radiation to the top stone at nearly the same rate as the bottomstone. For my bake on this occasion, i just placed some lava rocks on my bottom stone and waited for them to heat up sufficiently until i could push them to the backto act as my radiative/hot heat source.

-Using no Diffuser. My bottom firebricks at the time would heat up like mad.

-Using firebrick halves especially if i wasn't using the heat dam mod correctly. The air would escape between the firebricks.If i were to use firebricks next time, i would make sure my bottom stone was in no way connected to where the burner wouldinitially heat the stone. (aka use an air gap or sand)

-Having a massive Air gap between my stone and my cordierite spacers on the grill. Even with the Air Dam mod involved, What this definitely created was that air wouldgo below the bottom stones and create a less intense heat over the stones.

-As indicated by the thread, having a 3 inch air gap between the top and the bottom stone. once i decreased this, my pizzas were cooking a bit better.

Digestibility be damned! I'll pay the price tomarrow. Tonight the song of the pizza sounds as a siren's song does to a lonesome sailor alone at sea. ( cue dramatic music in the backgound)

Thanks for the laugh Don.

Compatta - Really nice post and I like the diagram as well. I'm such a visual learner but lack the compooter skills. I'm glad the information in this thread has been helpful to you. I think member Villa Roma deserves so much credit for his original LBE/MBE work. I also think Mike deserves credit for his disk mod as well. I was able to concentrate AND balance out the bake even more after implementing that mod. I'm also really pleased with my lid air dam mod as well and credit also go to members Buceriasdon and Jet_deck for their ideas and input as well. These particular mods made a real difference to achieving a great bake in my MBE. Of course having good dough is another essential part of the equation to good pizza.

The only real differences between our setups as far as I can see, is that I have the sand bowl pulled towards the front and I don't use lava rocks on the grill around the perimeter of my stone. BUT if you are getting great results then go with that. BTW, feel free to post pictures of your bakes as well. I'm sure the home viewing audience always appreciates looking at pizza, especially when they aren't eating it.

I also agree about getting rid of the firebrick floor. It worked better for me prior to the Essen disk mod, but I am currently baking on a cheapo $12 thin pizza stone. I have since learned to dial my hearth temps back to match my desired baking times.

When I first implemented the sand bowl, I also tried lava rocks and charcoal grilling ceramic stones and discovered that they didn't work to buffer heat. Thats where the sand idea came in and it works well so I haven't tried removing it since. I did find that a little less than 3/4 of a bowl works well.

Overall, I would have to say that the MBE is an awesome little pizza oven. Quick heat up times and great results. I couldn't be happier.

No... thank you! That was one of the more detailed write-ups I've seen yet.

Just curious if anyone can take some actual measurements of everything that exists between the burner and the top stone? I'm working on a modified version of the MBE (details to come-- still gathering parts) but it's really quite hard to tell what dimensions are involved (or what works best for you guys) by videos and pictures alone.

I won't be working with a Weber platform but I *think* I'll be able to use a larger top stone and have the ability to make a lot of vertical adjustments to fine-tune the finished product.. I just need that decent 'baseline' to get started.

Thanks!

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buceriasdon

Welcome CMY, Here's the straight skinny my friend, you're on your own. You say you won't be using a Weber ?, then any dimensions anyone gives you would be useless. Useless. Judge by pictures and text to get a general idea of what you need to do. You will have to engineer and then re engineer many times over to obtain even baking on top and bottom of your pizza in your oven. An inch here, an inch there. It's called trial and error and I can say without a doubt you are in for plenty of it. Quite frankly I would have abandoned the project if at some point I didn't realize I had to figure it out on my own what I needed to change in my setup. What others made work for them simply was not working for me as their grills were different than mine. For me it was ditching the aluminum plate in the lid and replacing it with Staillo tile. I use no diffuser bowl, others do. Experiment! Keep your dough recipes simply at first, flour, water, yeast and salt. Use the best flour you can get. Take pictures and keep good notes! Start a new thread and tell us about your oven. Keep at it and ,trust me, you will be rewarded with great pizza in an oven you created.Don

No... thank you! That was one of the more detailed write-ups I've seen yet.

Just curious if anyone can take some actual measurements of everything that exists between the burner and the top stone? I'm working on a modified version of the MBE (details to come-- still gathering parts) but it's really quite hard to tell what dimensions are involved (or what works best for you guys) by videos and pictures alone.

I won't be working with a Weber platform but I *think* I'll be able to use a larger top stone and have the ability to make a lot of vertical adjustments to fine-tune the finished product.. I just need that decent 'baseline' to get started.

I kinda figured as much (and I'm looking forward to starting my own thread) but I have no problem with R&D on this; I asked more in a sense of "what ballpark should I be looking at?" rather than a schematic to success.

CMY - welcome to the forum. I agree with Don in that there will be a lot of trialing and error unless you use the exact same set up as some one else. I had almost given up on the MBE several times but glad I didn't. As nice of a pizza oven as it is, you'll be limited to 11" pies so I tend to push folks towards the 18" LBE. That should allow for a maximum pie size of 16" with the flexibility of doing smaller pies as well.

I stopped by Lowes the other day ready to pick up the 18" weber when my eyes happened upon the new Charbroil Patio Bistro infrared portable grill. These things come with an electric heating element or LP option.

For a long time now, I have always thought that if I could find a round electrical heating element I would mount it to the dome of my MBE to provide top heat. Well I did some preliminary research but was not successful in finding such options and here it is...the charbroil infrared grill.

When you see this thing in person you'll quickly realize that is poorly built and way overpriced. The cool thing about this is that it has the electric heating element. What can we do with that? Well I was thinking maybe I can mount it upside down in the lid to provide top heat and use my LP burner for the bottom heat. That would make a great pizza oven, if one can get it to work.

The downside is that replacement parts are expensive. I priced out the replacement element and control dial and it's $50 each ($100 total). The whole set up is $169 at Lowes. So at this point it's a $170+ experiment. If it doesn't work, I doubt I could return it in it's modified condition.

Or I can hack up a $70 18" weber charcoal grill. Hmmm decisions.

CMY or anyone interested. You guys should look into this Charbroil Patio Bistro infrared electricl grill. CMY, if you need any specific measurements just ask and I'll do my best.

Once again, my pizza was cooked even better this time! Though, i would like to report the following:

-I noticed that i wasn't an exact "pro" at turning my pizza every so while. Due to the nature of the heat vent mod, all the hot air comes from the back and especially if you don't turn it every so while, it burns the crust like no other!

-I know this sounds like rocket science, but the slower you heat your MBE, the less overall propane that will be used. I noticed my diffuser glowed bright orange (as the diffuser itself only absorbs and releases heat so fast) and that tended to also to warp the coal grates itself.

-Even at around 550 ish, i think my crust could be a bit more crispy (glutenboy NY style). As i have a 16 inch round cordierite x 5/8 shelf, i think the stone doesn't have enough stored energy/gas to make it crispier. As the stone is separated with an upside down Pizza Pan (which acts as an "air buffer" (which is only 1/60 as conductive as cordierite) ), even with the 4 minute bake time, the burner doesn't really effect the bottom stone in any ways. Perhaps if i increased the thickness or temperature of the stone itself, it might be a bit crispier.

From my constant failtures, i Noticed the following:

-Once again, sounding like rocket science, if you use a diffuser on your burner and use a solid cordierite stone on your grill, there is no need tofor Metal supports as A) the burners are not directly charring and warping the metal grill anymore and B) A solid cordierite stone distributesthe weight on the grill.

-As i said in my last post, If you want the conductivity of cordierite with the ability to slowly absorb heat like quarry tiles or fibrament, all you needis a lower conductive "heat buffer" below it. Especially when using a heat vent mod, you want to make sure the heat doesn't escape under the stoneitself. So what i did was place my stone on top of an upside down pizza pan.

-In order to the solve the issue of inconsistent charring on the cornicone, i decided to use a "turntable mod." As recommended in other threads, making a turntable is as easy as attaching a 1/4 x 2 inch stainless steel bolt in combination with a bunch of washers and 1 nut. Ideally, you will have drilled a holein the center of the stone and pizza pan and it rotates correctly. Additionally, in order to reduce the amount of times i actually open up the grill (which i thinkslows down the cooking of the top), my vent is actually 2 inches x 8 inches (which i did by mistake back then) and it allows me to use a pair of chopsticks (you can use tongs also). The combination of the heat vent in addition to creating a turntable makes the back like a "radiant heater" (as i remember from 2stone discussions, the backof the grill is about 100 degree hotter than the front of the grill.) More pictures about how to make this in the future.

Since i place 12 inch pizzas on 16 inch stone, as opposed to placing the pizza in the center, it was interesting to stagger the pizza near the edge as opposed to being placeddirectly on the center. It will definitely creates zones of crunchiness and zones of softness on the pizza.

Perhaps this build is becoming too much like the 2stone? Than again, at this point the price difference, after buying all pizza equipment and experimenting witha good design, comes to about a $200 for buying all the equipment. As for considering an infrared propane burner in the future, which would definitely be overkill.But if anybody wants to collaborate on designing a commercial style 30 inch "UFO-BE" that utilizes an infrared burn to good effect, i'm game!

The following i did to failure:

-Lava Rocks, more likely than not, crowded my stone and made it difficult to put my pizza on my 16 inch stone.-Put sand below the stone itself. As the intention of the sand was to slow down heat transfer, it slowed it down wayyy too much. I decide to put no sand below the stone as i definitely changed the way how my stone moves with a turntable mod.-As i said last time, put wayy too much sand into the diffuser. I decided to use less sand this time.

Oh yeah. Here was my pizza the last time i made it. i was a NY-politan made with GM better for bread flour. For some odd reason,i want to stay away from High Gluten, especially Bromated Flours for a while. I just not im love with the flour exactly. I'm waiting tobuy some All trumps, unbromated flour in San Diego sometimes in the future. Otherwise, its not bad considering that was my 15th attemptat making pizza. Just need to learn how sourdough cultures work and learn to make my own cheese.

CMY or anyone interested. You guys should look into this Charbroil Patio Bistro infrared electricl grill.

Not going that far.. the simple facts are that I have a BC fryer (doing double duty for brewing) and I also have a slightly older Char-Broil smoker that was used once in the last 10 years. It's clean, almost new (after a bath) and ready for duty.

I've been waffling back and forth on buying a new 18" Weber for this but it occurred to me today that I could easily adjust a lot of good/bad if I mounted the burner within this tub (and started off with some proven specs). As the product of a few engineers I like a solid foundation.

I've got a week or two until I have a vehicle that can pick up "R2P2" (amongst other items) and start my own thread.

We'll see how it pans out.. pretty sure that recommending an untested product to a newbie is not the way to go, however.

We'll see how it pans out.. pretty sure that recommending an untested product to a newbie is not the way to go, however.

-Chris

Chris, I'm sure you will be well happy enough with building your own MBE/LBE. Hopefully you will find all the past experimentations, failures, and successes by myself and many others beneficial to you.

I will say that much of what has been achieved in this forum & community come from many hours of studying, reading the forum, endless "new" experimentations, along with many failures before any sucesses are enjoyed. And then more time and effort is taken to do write ups along with pictures. I myself have been able to benefit from the work of many others along with making my own contributions to this community. I stand behind my recommendation for "newbies" to branch out and test uncharted territory. Experiment on untested products, unconventional methods and ideas. Discover something new for the benefit of yourself and the community. And you don't have to be a forum superstar to try something new. It can be something as small as increasing the hydration level to your dough to see what happens to something totally brand new like modifying a new grill. For when we don't step out of our comfort zones, we don't grow.

At this point, my recommendation will be no more new and untested than your very own LBE/MBE project. It is basically an LBE with a top heat source. I have merely given you an idea for which you are free to do as you wish. I look forward to reading about your build and seeing pictures of your setup and the resulting pizzas. I wish you all the luck in your pizza journey.

Regards,Chau

« Last Edit: January 20, 2011, 08:17:50 AM by Jackie Tran »

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buceriasdon

Chris, My high pressure burner extends inside the bottom of the kettle 3/4" or 20 mm. Between the bottle of my tile(hearth) and the top of the burner the distance is 5.5" or 14 cm. I use no diffuser of any kind. Distance between the hearth tile and the lid mounted tile is 3" or 7.7 cm. The inside diameter of the kettle is 17.5" or 44.5 cm. The gap at the rear between the kettle and the tile is a maximum of 1" 25mm tapering to zero. As my tile is an octogon there five such open areas. The three forward open areas are stuffed with al. foil. I use a twenty to forty lb. high pressure regulator imported from the USA. I wrapped electrical tape around the adjustment thread on the regulator to maintain a consistent setting so I can back it off after a baking session. I use no foil inside. My ramp up time to 700F, 350C is 15 minutes. For what it's worth, there you have it. Don

Quote from: CMY link=topic=11126.msg123852#msg123852 date=129550,6525

Not going that far.. the simple facts are that I have a BC fryer (doing double duty for brewing) and I also have a slightly older Char-Broil smoker that was used once in the last 10 years. It's clean, almost new (after a bath) and ready for duty.

I've been waffling back and forth on buying a new 18" Weber for this but it occurred to me today that I could easily adjust a lot of good/bad if I mounted the burner within this tub (and started off with some proven specs). As the product of a few engineers I like a solid foundation.

I've got a week or two until I have a vehicle that can pick up "R2P2" (amongst other items) and start my own thread.

We'll see how it pans out.. pretty sure that recommending an untested product to a newbie is not the way to go, however.

Chris, My high pressure burner extends inside the bottom of the kettle 3/4" or 20 mm. Between the bottle of my tile(hearth) and the top of the burner the distance is 5.5" or 14 cm. I use no diffuser of any kind. Distance between the hearth tile and the lid mounted tile is 3" or 7.7 cm. The inside diameter of the kettle is 17.5" or 44.5 cm. The gap at the rear between the kettle and the tile is a maximum of 1" 25mm tapering to zero. As my tile is an octogon there five such open areas. The three forward open areas are stuffed with al. foil. I use a twenty to forty lb. high pressure regulator imported from the USA. I wrapped electrical tape around the adjustment thread on the regulator to maintain a consistent setting so I can back it off after a baking session. I use no foil inside. My ramp up time to 700F, 350C is 15 minutes. For what it's worth, there you have it. Don

Compatta, again nice post with diagram. I see you have made some changes to your MBE like pulling the lava rocks from around the stone. I also like the turntable mod you did. I should really look into that myself. I think it will help give me an even puffier rim secondary to retained heat. Also varying the sand level sounds like a good idea. Everyone's oven will cook differently so it's mostly just continue tinkering until you get the results you want.

I baked up a couple of good pies in the MBE tonight and thought I would show them off. Marc, these pies are for you. I bought this HG BF from Sunflower Market. I don't think it is bromated but could be wrong. I tried googling it and didn't come up with much. Maybe someone knows the answer. Anyhow, this flour does make good pizza.

When I started making pizza a year ago, I started using supermarket flours and this one. I haven't used this in a long time b/c I had that 50lb bag of Sam's club HG bromated flour to use up. Now that it's just about gone, I decided to go back and revisiting Sunflower market HG bread flour.

Consequently, this makes for better dough and better pizza than it did a year ago. No doubt I have learned a few things since then.

I used Don Pepino's canned sauce on these pies tonight and they were great! I did alter the sauce just a bit by sweetening it up and adding a little cayenne peppa. The canned sauce was a bit salty for my taste but overall I did like it quite a bit.

Here's the first pie. A cheese pizza with a bit of basil, parm/romano, & EVOO.

Here's then 2nd pie. I baked this one out a bit darker to resemble the New Haven style pies. I like this one better. Topped with pepperoni and jarred jalepenos and mozz made from curd (thanks Bob!). Finished with a good helping of basil, a sprinkle of parm/romano, and OO. It was fantastic.

Great looking pies! I hope you see I am still smiling. Your being able to make such delicious looking pies with almost any flour is impressive. I am sure you have learned a lot since you used the same flour before.

Thanks Norma, you have always been one of the few who have encouraged me along the way and I thank you.

I was really pleased with this particular dough and bake because I made many adjustments to the dough & dough making protocol to accomodate my work schedule. For example, I had woken up earlier than normal and decided to make dough on short notice for pies 12 hours later. I was using a flour I hadn't used in close to a year, I had to ball the dough shortly after mixing because I would be at work all day.I made a drier dough than normal just to see the effects. I put oil in one ball and not the other, can you all see tge difference in the crumb? Which one has oil? I ask my wife to send me pictures of the dough via cell phone so I can better monitor the dough. This is of course after I ask how she and the girls are doing. I also frequently ask her to place the dough into a warm microwave to hasten proofing. So depending on my work schedule, I prefer to under yeast the dough and vary the prooing temps depending on when I want to bake.

Anyways, I'm finding that I play a huge role in making the pizza I enjoy. It's much more than following a recipe and fermenting for X hours. I'm in control of more of the process and that makes it much more fun for me.

Thanks Norma, you have always been one of the few who have encouraged me along the way and I thank you.

I was really pleased with this particular dough and bake because I made many adjustments to the dough & dough making protocol to accomodate my work schedule. For example, I had woken up earlier than normal and decided to make dough on short notice for pies 12 hours later. I was using a flour I hadn't used in close to a year, I had to ball the dough shortly after mixing because I would be at work all day.I made a drier dough than normal just to see the effects. I put oil in one ball and not the other, can you all see tge difference in the crumb? Which one has oil? I ask my wife to send me pictures of the dough via cell phone so I can better monitor the dough. This is of course after I ask how she and the girls are doing. I also frequently ask her to place the dough into a warm microwave to hasten proofing. So depending on my work schedule, I prefer to under yeast the dough and vary the prooing temps depending on when I want to bake.

Anyways, I'm finding that I play a huge role in making the pizza I enjoy. It's much more than following a recipe and fermenting for X hours. I'm in control of more of the process and that makes it much more fun for me.

Chau

Chau,

I always enjoyed how you go about trying innovative ways and methods and incorporate them into all your pizza making. I can understand how your work schedule does interfere with making dough, but believe it makes your skills better, because you do like to experiment so much, in so many ways.

I am not sure if I can detect which one has oil in the formula, but it might look to me that your first pie did have oil added. I am not an expert of just looking at a pie and being able to tell when oil is added. Let me know which pie had oil added. Do you like oil in your dough or do you prefer no oil?

I also believe after the basics of understanding how dough works, then it on to understanding different techniques to understand more how dough really ferments under different conditions.

You are doing a great job. Keep up your experiments. Your experiments are always interesting.

Let me know which pie had oil added. Do you like oil in your dough or do you prefer no oil?

Norma

Norma you and Gene are correct. The first pie had oil in it. It was just a quick experiment to see the difference for this particular dough I was making. Generally at 1-2%, I can't taste much difference but changes in texture are apparent both visually and in mouth feel. I can also see and feel it's affect on the gluten structure in the dough once added in during the mix. I do like to use it, but use it more as a softening agent when I'm cold fermenting or if I'm using a starter instead of commercial yeast.

Just a trivial side note, you can make a moist, soft, and gooey looking crumb without the use of oil as well.

Not sure if this has been covered already, but has anyone tried to setup their MBE on a gas stove top instead of the Bayou Classic? just curious if a home range would put out enough btu's to bring the MBE up to temp...